Critical paths managing

The standard requires that measurements be defined, analyzed, and reported to management at appropriate stages of product realization and that these measurements include quality risk, costs, lead times, critical paths, and others as appropriate. 

Most detailed programs for plant-related projects are prepared using simple critical path analysis (CPA) techniques. CPA is a well-known and familiar technique to most engineers and is incorporated into most modern PC-based planning and scheduling systems. Such a system typically has the following features that a plant project manager will find useful ... 

Once past the discovery and initial development stages, the safety assessment aspects of the process become extremely tightly connected with the other aspects of the development of a compound, particularly the clinical aspects. These interconnections are coordinated by project management systems. At many times during the early years of the development process, safety assessment constitutes the rate-limiting step it is, in the language of project management, on the critical path. 

The coordination of this entire complex process is the province of project management, the objective of which is to ensure that all the necessary parts and components of a project mate up. This discipline in its modem form was first developed for the Polaris missile project in the 1960s. Its major tool that is familiar to pharmaceutical scientists is the network or PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) chart, as illustrated in Figure 1.2. This chart is a tool that allows one to see and coordinate the relationships between the different components of a project. One outcome of the development of such a network is identification of the rate-limiting steps, which, in aggregate, comprise the critical path (see Table 1.3 for a lexicon of the terms used in project management). 

Control of the project is achieved by ensuring that all the tasks, or at least those which are on the critical path, are completed on time. For those elements of the project which have a relatively long time frame for completion, e.g. those which take months rather than weeks, the Project Manager may need to set up sub-projects in order to monitor the progress of these elements on a more even time basis. 

If one wants to plan and control a larger project in a serious manner, project management software packages are essential and save a lot of time. These programs use entry data such as task descriptions, their duration, start or finish times, tasks dependencies and milestones to automatically sequence and schedule the project tasks. Conflicts and logic errors are identified and the project is re-scheduled after these have been corrected. A critical path analysis function reveals and... 

Identification of all activities, critical path, and key milestones (Gantt charts) Recognition and management of project risk Ensnring project prereqnisites are pnt in place Establishment of progress reporting method... 

Although project management was certainly applied in practice prior to the mid-1950 s, the development of the critical path method and the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is considered to be the initiation of the modern practice of project management. The critical path method is a network analysis technique used to predict project duration by analyzing which sequence of activities or path most likely has the least amount of scheduling flexibility or... 

Network logic determines the relationship between the tasks or team member deliverables, either sequential (finish to start) or overlapping (start to start and/or finish to finish). There are numerous software packages available at low cost to support calculation of the critical path and float. However, the real challenge of project management tools is the creation of the project network based upon historical experience and team involvement. By definition projects are rmique and, in the pharmaceutical arena, each project is different. Therefore, the importance of team member involvement in the development, tracking, and adjustment of the project schedule is crucial to successful application of project management basics. 

Decentralization— making divisions more independent. Flat Organizations—eliminate middle management. Critical Path Analysis—studying general procedures. Sales Force Automation—computerizing the sales force. 

Furthermore, external project management systems will be coupled with the process management system. For example, MS Project offers additional views of the design process like Gantt-charts with marked critical paths. 

Time constraints, expenses, and staffing do not play a predominant role in the current state of the AHEAD system. Nevertheless, they have to be considered in process management. Widespread project management systems like Microsoft Project offer functions like the computation of a critical path in an activity network, workload balancing for the staff or calculation of the aggregated expenses for (parts of) a project. Besides these available functions, project management systems offer additional views on the current project state, like the activity oriented Gantt-chart or diverse resource-oriented views. 

Action systems will tighten up as time compresses. Project management systems such as the Critical Path Method and the Program Evaluation and Review Technique, so successfully used in the Sixties, will find wider application. 

Finally, no management system can be considered without the support of a planning operation with various types of bar charts, PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) charts and full critical path analysis. Although these systems are a useful tool for management, occasionally there is a risk that the system takes over management. 

Project manager Team administrator Optional administration delegate to project teams, usually sent to ensure adherence to timelines and critical path activities in larger companies... 

The critical path is identified for two reasons. First, if unexpected issues or changes occur to a given task after the project begins, the impact, if any, on the overall project schedule can be determined quickly. Second, knowing the critical path enables the project manager and team to consider quickly where the schedule can be compressed to accommodate project imperatives and unexpected changes. 

Critical path (CP) rule, 1722, 1724 CRM, see Customer relationship management CRN technique, see Common random numbers technique... 

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